Tag Archive: Emissions

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Americans drove 1.4 billion fewer highway miles in April than they did in April 2007, the Department of Transportation said Wednesday.

I met a woman who quit her job with a 22-mile commute each way because on days when she only worked a few hours, it was costing her more to drive to work than the $7/hr she was earning. It was the first time I had heard someone in the middle class tell me they cannot afford to drive to work.

On the plus side, fewer miles means less CO2 in our atmosphere and more focus and energy being spent on solving our energy crisis than ever before.

I’m 29 years old. I purchased my first gallon of gas for around $0.79 at age 16. Ten years later, I was paying $2.49/gallon. Today, a gallon of gasoline (regular unleaded) is $4.18 at the pump; a 430% increase over my first gallon.

Some get mad at the price. They point fingers at oil companies making record profits or at President Bush (the worst president ever) and his oil buddies or they blame the war. And they (we) should be angry, but what really angers me is the feeling that we’ll allow this rise in prices to continue unabated until our country bursts at the seams with inflation. The oil companies have a hand in everything we do from driving to work to taking a much-needed, well-deserved vacation. We had a choice in the 1970s when we saw the first dramatic spike in oil, but we sat idling in the great parking-lots of centers of energy and policy. And we have the same choice today, but for some reason, the technologies are slow-moving. Why are hybrids still too costly for the lower middle class? What does it mean when in America, the cost of driving to work, does not warrant the job itself? And today there’s more at stake than just the price of gas, we must consider also the cost of driving. What impact will current and future technologies have on our environment and well-being? So I’m not just frustrated with big oil, I’m frustrated with us. We’re not the only country in the world importing oil, but we a great country on the fragile brink of economic collapse because of a severe lack of foresight.

I’m asking now for those readers who do not normally comment, to consider posting ideas for free-energy, education, the economy, etc. We don’t need to fuel the argument; we need to power a solution.